I am all for assessing student singing, but for some time I have struggled to find a way to assess that did not take up an unreasonable amount of time. I have tended to favor informal methods, where I walk up to individual students while they are singing with the rest of the class, listen … Continue reading Producing Assessable Student Work in Music Performance
music teaching
How Can Students’ Practice Be Improved?
Regardless of how successful a private music lesson is, a large measure of the student’s eventual success depends on regular and effective practice at home. Often, attention is given to how to get students to practice more, but not enough attention is given to what students should be doing when they are practicing. I have … Continue reading How Can Students’ Practice Be Improved?
Thinking In Music is the Key to Music Literacy
One of the reasons teaching music reading and writing is so challenging for students and music teachers is that music is not used nearly as often as a basis for thought and actions. Every action begins with a thought, and thoughts are generally pictures or words; images or descriptions. Music for most people is something … Continue reading Thinking In Music is the Key to Music Literacy
What Does Music Have To Do With Social Development?
School is a social environment. Learning takes place in classes where groups of children are gathered, usually 20-25 at a time. When everything is going smoothly, students are listening to a teacher and to each other, are asking and answering questions, responding to prompts, understanding what is being said or done, and keeping their attention … Continue reading What Does Music Have To Do With Social Development?
A Tale of Two Temperings
In our well-tempered musical culture, all musical keys tend to sound the same, except for being higher or lower. Yet throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, composers enjoyed the rich and expressive variety in the way different keys sounded. Rousseau described D major as being suited for “gaiety or brilliance,” Schumann spoke of C major … Continue reading A Tale of Two Temperings
What To Consider When Planning A School Concert
When planning a concert, there are many more things to keep in mind than just the date, time, place, and what pieces will be programmed. While these certainly need to be set, without first establishing why we give concerts with our students, and what we hope to accomplish by doing so, programming and scheduling issues … Continue reading What To Consider When Planning A School Concert
An Intervention Strategy for Teaching Music Reading of Rhythms
It seems there can never be too many methods for teaching music rhythm, especially where reading music is concerned. It is interesting that music notation can be at once both so logical and so confusing. Researchers have taught us that music reading is learned similarly to language reading; first we learn a vocabulary of patterns, … Continue reading An Intervention Strategy for Teaching Music Reading of Rhythms
Teaching Antecedent and Consequent Phrase Structure in Music
One of the musical structures we must teach our students is that of phrasing, or what Lerdahl & Jackendoff refer to as grouping. Basic to musical phrases is the concept of antecedent and consequent phrases. Antecedent phrases are complete phrases that end on a pitch of relative instability or tension, resulting in the listener expecting … Continue reading Teaching Antecedent and Consequent Phrase Structure in Music
Deeper Understanding Must Follow Rote Learning
Last week, one of my third grade classes did not enter my classroom according to my expectations. Some ran in, they were generally noisy, and even though they have assigned seats, they were rushing to sit elsewhere. This doesn't happen every time they come in, so I don't why it happened that day, but it … Continue reading Deeper Understanding Must Follow Rote Learning
Anatomy of a Lesson Plan
Teachers seem to write lesson plans for different reasons. Some make plans to guide themselves through the teaching of a lesson, some make plans to document what they did so they can repeat the lesson another year, and some write lesson plans just because they have to. My guess is that most of us write … Continue reading Anatomy of a Lesson Plan
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